On 14th December 2013 the death occurred of Professor Geoffrey
Barrow at his home in Edinburgh at the age of 89. His qualities and
achievements as one of the greatest of all Scottish medieval
historians have been justly praised and enumerated by David Torrance
in
an obituary, which appeared in the Herald on 20th December,
and by Dauvit Broun in a warm appreciation, which appeared in the
same paper on 30th January last. Neither mentions specifically
Geoffrey’s remarkable contribution to the study and understanding of
Scottish place-names, nor to the fact that he was Honorary preses
of the Scottish Place-Name Society.

Geoffrey (often referred to affectionately as GWSB, the initials of
his full name, Geoffrey Wallis Steuart Barrow) and the other great
Scottish place-name scholar, W. F. H. (Bill) Nicolaisen, each
generously agreed to take on the important titular role of preses
when the Society was launched in 1996. Preses (plural presides), a
Scots loan-word from Latin præses, means ‘chief, president’, chosen
because it was less Clan-like than the first and less formal than
the second, the cognate ‘president’. That both Geoffrey and Bill
enthusiastically accepted this role was an important vote of
confidence from the academic establishment in the Society in its
still very uncertain infancy. Geoffrey spoke at the conference ‘Uses
of Place-Names’, which was held in St Andrews in 1995, at which the
decision to found SPNS was taken, and his paper ‘The Uses of
Place-names and Scottish History - Pointers and Pitfalls’ went on to
be published as one of the most important chapters in the edited
proceedings of that conference in 1998 (see Bibliography, below, for
full details). Over the years Geoffrey attended many of the SPNS
conferences, both as part of the audience and as a speaker. His
benign presence and apposite, informed and perceptive contributions
enriched both formal and informal discussion. One of his last papers
of all was on the lost place-names of Moray, which he delivered at
the SPNS conference in Elgin in May 2008, and which appeared with
this title in the Journal of Scottish Name Studies in the same year.
He declared it his last published article, which it was.

His engagement with Scottish place-names went back much further than
the 1990s, however. Early on in his long career he came to realise
how important place-names were in understanding the pre-documentary
and early documentary period of Scottish history. Place-names were
an integral part of one of his most important and influential pieces
of writing, the first chapter of The Kingdom of the Scots, first
published in 1973, ‘pre-feudal Scotland: shires and thanes’, singled
out by Dauvit Broun as ‘not only a tour de force of early medieval
scholarship, but ... hugely influential on the way historical
geographers and archaeologists as well as social historians have
thought about early British society’ (Herald ‘Appreciation’ 30 Jan.
2014). In this chapter the evidence of place-names, some of it
presented in the form of place-name maps, was marshalled to great
effect to throw light on early administration and administrative
units, and may be seen as one of the game-changers in Scottish
toponymics. GWSB ‘Popular Courts in Early Medieval Scotland: Some
Suggested Place-Name Evidence’, 1981 and 1992); the pre-documentary
history of Christianity in Scotland (‘The Childhood of Scottish
Christianity: a Note on Some Place-Name Evidence’, 1983, and
‘Religion in Scotland on the eve of Christianity’, 1998); ‘Land
Routes: The Medieval Evidence’ 1984, 1992) and fine-grained
socio-linguistic history (‘The Lost Gàidhealtachd of medieval
Scotland’, 1989, 1992). Each one of these may be regarded as the
bedrock of all future scholarly investigation of these different
aspects of toponymics, with each standing as eloquent and
inspirational testimony for how much the careful study of
place-names can bring to the wider disciplines of social, political
and linguistic history.

My own personal scholarly debt to GWSB is immense. He co-supervised
my PhD, which was on aspects of the place-names of Fife (1995). As
part of the supervision process he provided me with a swathe of his
unpublished charter transcriptions, which not only informed my
thesis but also went on to enrich in multifarious ways all the
volumes of Place-Names of Fife. He took a lively and encouraging
interest in these volumes as they emerged over the period between
2006 and 2012, and I would regularly receive hand-written letters,
with their hall-mark Scottish lion-rampant stamps, containing
expressions of appreciation along with acute observations and
difficult questions. I received the last one of these letters only
two months before his death.

I will end this short tribute with a select bibliography of
Geoffrey’s more important toponymic works. This list is not in any
way exhaustive, either absolutely or even in toponymic terms, and
does not take into consideration his fundamentally important
editions of royal charters (David I, Malcolm IV and William I), as
well as other edited collections, relating mainly to Fife. All these
provide early forms of place-names, reliably transcribed, edited and
located. A complete bibliography of his work up until the end of
1992 can be found in his Festschrift Medieval Scotland, Crown,
Lordship and Community, edited by Alexander Grant and Keith
J. Stringer (Edinburgh 1993), the bibliography itself compiled by
his daughter, Julia Barrow. According to the Bibliography of
British and Irish History (BBIH) another 32 items were
written by him between 1993 and 2008.

Gaelic speakers and learners can now access specialised Gaelic
terminology relating to the historical environment, via an online
thesaurus which has been launched as a joint project by
Historic Scotland and the Royal Commission for the Ancient and
Historical Monuments of Scotland, with financial support from Bòrd
na Gàidhlig. The thesaurus contains more than 4,000 terms and is
aimed at Gaelic speakers, learners and schools, as well as the
general public. It provides terminology relating to areas such as
architecture, archaeology and history as well as place-names for
many historical sites. As a thesaurus, it not only functions as an
English-Gaelic, Gaelic-English dictionary of terminology but also
provides the meaning of each term in both languages.

Alasdair MacCaluim, Historic Scotland Gaelic Language and Policy
Officer said: “The thesaurus is an invaluable aid for translators or
anybody with an interest in reading or writing about Scotland’s
historical environment in Gaelic. By providing consistent and
standardised terminology for this specialist area, it will add to
the development of the language’s corpus”.

Peter McKeague, Database and GIS Projects manager at RCAHMS
said: “Scotland leads the way in multi-lingual Linked Data thesauri.
Until now our vocabularies and thesauri have acted as informal
standards on the Internet. Publication of the Scottish
Monument terms as Linked Data will improve data quality and allow
our terms to act as vocabulary hubs on the Internet.”

Through the SENESCHAL project, which is funded by the Arts and
Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Gaelic monument terms are
available in machine readable format as part of the Scottish
Monument type Thesaurus published on the www.heritagedata.org website;
the home of Linked Data Vocabularies for Cultural
Heritage.

Head of Gaelic Usage at Bòrd na Gàidhlig, David Boag said: "The
National Gaelic Language Plan highlights the requirement for
projects which add strength and consistency to Gaelic language
corpus development. It is vital that Gaelic is able to be used
in the growing range of contexts in which it features on a daily
basis, within Scotland and beyond. Bòrd na Gàidhlig cannot
achieve this without partners and we fully acknowledge the work that
Historic Scotland and RCHAMS have undertaken in support of this aim
and we welcome the creation of this high quality, valuable
resource."

SCOTTISH TOPONYMY IN TRANSITION:
PROGRESSING COUNTY SURVEYS OF THE PLACE-NAMES OF SCOTLAND

Scottish Toponymy in Transition (STIT) was an AHRC-funded
research project at the University of Glasgow, running from May 2011
to June 2014. The aim is to advance the long-term goal of surveying
all of Scotland’s place-names, by publishing survey volumes for
three historical counties and initiating research on two others.
STIT continues the momentum of Simon Taylor’s The Place-Names
of Fife, produced during the course of a previous AHRC-funded
project (Gaelic in Medieval Scotland: The Onomastic Evidence,
2006–2010), and aims to establish a firm foundation for future
surveys. The team comprises Thomas Clancy (Principal Investigator),
Carole Hough (Co-Investigator), Simon Taylor (Chief Researcher),
Peter McNiven (Research Associate) and Eila Williamson (Research
Associate). There is also a PhD student, Leonie Dunlop, whose role
is vital not only in contributing to the research itself, but in
ensuring that the project does indeed lay a foundation for the
future by bringing new young scholars into the discipline.

The project will produce two full county surveys, for the historical
counties of Clackmannanshire and Kinross-shire. Both are small in
terms of geographical area, but have complex administrative and
parish histories. These surveys will include a full toponymic
analysis of all place-names on the Ordnance Survey 1:25,000
(Explorer) maps, and of all obsolete settlement names recorded
before 1560. The research methods are those developed for The
Place-Names of Fife, and the volumes will be produced to the
same high standard.

During the first year of the project, work on Kinross-shire has
reached an advanced stage, with name collection and analysis
completed for four of the five parishes (Cleish, Kinross, Orwell and
Portmoak). Fossoway too is in draft, but remains to be finished.
Alongside this, preliminary work has been carried out on
Clackmannanshire, including the laying out of head-names and grid
references, collection of data from early printed sources, and
transcription of Ordnance Survey Name Book entries. The Name Books
are among our key sources, and we are working with the National
Records of Scotland to make them available for both toponymic and
genealogical research.
The other three counties will not be fully surveyed during the
course of the project, but will be progressed to different stages.
Building on his PhD thesis on the Gaelic settlement-names of
Menteith (now under Stirling Council, but historically part of
Perthshire), Peter McNiven will complete a survey of Menteith,
intended as the first step towards a survey of the whole of
Perthshire. Research on Cunninghame initiated by Thomas Clancy will
similarly point ahead to a future survey of Ayrshire. Leonie Dunlop
has begun work on north-east Berwickshire, focusing particularly on
the charters of Coldingham preserved in Durham cathedral. Her PhD
thesis has the working title “Breaking old and new ground: an
analysis of Anglo-Saxon lexis in the assertion and redistribution of
land in four Berwickshire parishes”. The parishes in question are
Abbey St Bathans, Bunkle and Preston, Cockburnspath and Coldingham,
providing a mix of coastal and inland names. In another part of the
same county, Carole Hough and Eila Williamson are undertaking a
pilot study of four parishes along the border with England:
Coldstream, Hutton, Ladykirk and Mordington.

So much for the toponymy; what about the transition? Each of the
study areas presents a different mix of linguistic strata, alongside
transition of various kinds. In Clackmannanshire and Kinross-shire,
the early Brittonic language is generally taken to move from British
to Pictish (a view that may be challenged by the current research),
and there is also transition between areas where Gaelic survived as
a living language later than in others. In Menteith, Peter McNiven
has identified the late fifteenth century as the transitional period
when Gaelic began to be superseded by Scots for naming purposes. The
toponymy of Cunninghame is predominantly Scots, but here too there
is a Gaelic core, as well as names from British, Old English and Old
Norse.

Berwickshire reflects yet another type of transition. Bordering on
northern England and historically forming part of Anglo-Saxon
Northumbria, its place-names have more in common linguistically with
those of England than with those of other parts of Scotland.
However, since the English Place-Name Survey (EPNS) stops short at
the present-day border with Scotland, traditional scholarship has
treated the border counties with the Scottish rather than the
English onomasticon. Recent years have seen a paradigm shift towards
treating the toponymicon of southern Scotland and northern England
as a continuum (see e.g. Hough 2003, 2009; Scott 2004, 2008), and
now that the survey for County Durham is in progress, and Diana
Whaley has been appointed as EPNS editor for Northumberland, there
is a real opportunity for comparative analysis and collaboration.
With names from Old English as well as from Cumbrian and Gaelic,
Berwickshire raises questions not only about the diachronic
transition from Old English to Older Scots, but also about the
synchronic transition from Middle English to Middle Scots, and from
Modern English to Modern Scots.

It will be clear from the above that STIT is an exciting and
challenging project requiring a wide range of expertise. We are most
grateful for the active involvement and support of our Academic
Advisory Board, comprising Dauvit Broun (University of Glasgow),
Peder Gammeltoft (University of Copenhagen), Kay Muhr (Ulster
Place-Name Society, Belfast), Kevin Murray (University College,
Cork) and David Parsons (Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic
Studies, Aberystwyth). We are also fortunate to be able to draw on
our Knowledge Exchange Liaison Group (KELG), comprising two members
of the Academic Advisory Board (Dauvit Broun and Kay Muhr) alongside
others based within the study areas themselves. They are Janet
Carolan (Dollar Museum), Rob Close (Ayrshire Federation of
Historical Societies), Mark Hall (Perth Museums and Art Gallery),
Susan Mills (Clackmannanshire Council Museums and Heritage Service),
David Munro (Kinross Museum) and David Strachan (Perth & Kinross
Heritage Trust).

Knowledge Exchange is, indeed, a key aspect of the project. In order
to progress the academic research, it is crucial to have input from
local informants. And in order to disseminate that research, it is
equally crucial to establish and to maintain links with local
history societies, museums and other interested parties. We have a
strong commitment to activities such as exhibitions, seminars and
talks to local organisations, and we are in contact with – amongst
others – Education Scotland, the Living Lomonds Landscape
Partnership and the Ochils Landscape Partnership. Events that SPNS
members were invited to attend included the BBC’s Great British
Story roadshow in Glasgow on Saturday 9 June, where both STIT
and SPNS were represented, and a place-name walk from Tillicoultry
to Alva on Tuesday 19 June and Saturday 23 June organised by STIT as
part of the Ochils Festival.

Hough, Carole (2009), ‘“Find the lady”: the term lady in
English and Scottish place-names’, in Names in Multi-Lingual,
Multi-Cultural and Multi-Ethnic Contact: Proceedings of the 23rd
International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, August 17–22, 2008,
York University, Toronto, Canada, ed. Wolfgang Ahrens, Sheila
Embleton and André Lapierre with the assistance of Grant Smith and
Maria Figueredo (Toronto: York University), 511–18.

McNiven, Peter Edward (2011), Gaelic Place-Names and the Social
History of Gaelic Speakers in Medieval Menteith. PhD thesis,
University of Glasgow.

Onomastics.org
: Dr Peder Gammeltoft, known for his work on Scandinavian
place-names in the British Isles has created this website which
seeks to show how one can publish onomastic data on the internet, in
the form of search engines and mapped/geo-referenced data. Dr
Gammeltoft writes:

Website
for inspiration and debate

After
having advocated a digital future for name research, I have now
decided to ‘put my money where my mouth is’. Thus, I have created
this website showing the various types of online – and often free
– resources one may use in order to display onomastic data online
on the internet. The name of the website is: www.onomastics.org.
It is divided into a number of sections, the most important of
which are ‘Search Engines’ and ‘Geo-Coded Data’. The former
explores how it is possible to upload various kinds of name data
and display it on the internet by means of a search engine. The
latter, on the other hand, explores how it is possible to upload
and display geo-coded data on online maps – and in some cases also
with search facilities.

Several
online resources are tried out and briefly explained for each
example. Most of the examples have a clear Danish or Scandinavian
focus – this is owing to the fact that much of my work effort has
been concentrated on Denmark and the Nordic onomastic cooperation
the last couple of years.

For those
of you who are interested Danish place-names, there is also a link
under ‘Search Engines’ where a search engine provides access to
the electronic version of the Place-Names of Denmark (Danmarks
Stednavne). It is a very preliminary and unfinished search engine:
http://danmarksstednavne.navneforskning.ku.dk/.
The search engine comprises all 25 volumes of the series
Place-names of Denmark with head form, historical forms as well as
an interpretation in many cases. For the third of the country not
yet covered by this series, we have supplied the search engine
with head form and historical forms. A geo-referenced version will
appear in June (on another
site).

Tobar
an Dualchais ('Kist o Riches') website contains over 24,000
oral recordings in Scots and Gaelic recorded in Scotland and further
afield, from the 1930s onwards. Items include stories, songs,
music, poetry and information about place-names.

The proceedings of a conference held in Shetland in April 2003 by
the Nordic Cooperative Committee for Onomastic Research (NORNA), the
Scottish Place-Name Society (SPNS) and the Society for Name Studies
in Britain and Ireland (SNSBI)
were published as:

The volume is available at £10.00 per copy, plus £2.50 postage and
packing (UK only). Please send a cheque payable to SCOTTISH
PLACE-NAME SOCIETY to:
Professor Carole Hough, English Language, University of Glasgow,
Glasgow G12 8QQ

Profits from the sale of the volume are used to fund grants of up to
£125 to enable students of onomastics to attend conferences. The
grants are administered by a small steering committee representing
the three societies. Students who wish to apply should contact the
convener of the committee at the above address, or by email at carole.hough@glasgow.ac.uk.

Applications should be made at least two months before the
conference is scheduled to take place, and should include the
following information:

Gaelic
place-names research continues with support from Bòrd na Gàidhlig

Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba ~ Gaelic Place-names of Scotland, the
national advisory board for researching Gaelic forms of place-names
in Scotland is delighted to announce that its work will continue to
be funded by Bòrd na Gàidhlig over 2011 and 2012. Highland and
Argyll and Bute Councils will also continue their contributions to
the project.
AÀA evolved from the Gaelic Names Liaison Committee in 2006 to meet
the growing demand for Gaelic place-name research. Since then the
project has researched over 3,200 Gaelic place-names throughout
Scotland including names for trunk roads, settlements, core paths
networks for the Highland Council and the Forestry Commission, SNH’s
National Nature Reserves, ScotRail’s stations, bus and ferry
depots, street names in Inverness, Fort William and Glasgow
and the Gaelic names for Scotland’s electoral constituencies.
Alongside on-going work for clients and partners, AÀA is also
preparing a book on the Gaelic place-names of Islay and Jura in
partnership with SNH, with funding from SOILLSE and Iomairt
Ghàidhlig Ìle agus Diùra. The publication is due out later this
year.
AÀA’s research is being uploaded to the National Gazetteer of Gaelic
Place-names, a free online database available on www.ainmean-aite.org.
There are over 1,000 entries at present, with links to digital maps
and sound files to aid pronunciation. With funding secured for
another year, AÀA can confirm that they will continue to expand and
develop this invaluable resource for Scotland’s cultural and
linguistic heritage.
Chair of AÀA, Donald Morris welcomed the continuing support from
Bòrd na Gàidhlig and the other partners of AÀA adding that he was
delighted to be able to welcome new clients to the organisation each
year. "Place-names are of great importance to Scotland and
demonstrate the value of Gaelic to the nation. It can only be
good that more Gaelic is made available to all and the high standard
of work is testament to the exceptional team we have."
Head of Gaelic Usage at Bòrd na Gàidhlig, Daibhaidh Boag said:
“Bòrd na Gàidhlig works in partnership with a wide range of
public bodies across the spectrum of Scottish life in implementing
their Gaelic language plans. The service which AÀA provides to
these bodies plays a vital part in ensuring that the visibility of
Gaelic, through signage in particular, is increasing in communities
and routes across Scotland. Over and above this, we know that
there is significant interest amongst the wider public in finding
out more about the Gaelic forms of the places in their locality and
further afield. We are delighted with the success of the
project to date and look forward to growing the service in the years
to come, assisting in our efforts to re-vitalise Gaelic.”

(Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba is responsible for researching and
recommending the correct and appropriate Gaelic forms of place-names
for maps, signage and general use. The project, which employs two
full-time staff, is run by a partnership of organisations including
Bòrd na Gàidhlig, Argyll and Bute Council, Highland Council,
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, Comunn na Gàidhlig, the Scottish
Government, the Scottish Parliament, Ordnance Survey, Scottish
Natural Heritage, the University of the Highlands and Islands, the
Scottish Place-Name Society and Highlands and Islands
Enterprise. )

Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba ~ Gaelic
Place-names of Scotland is delighted to announce the launch
of the National Gazetteer of Gaelic Place-names.

Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba, the national advisory partnership to
research and establish Gaelic place-names has been developing the
National Gazetteer of Gaelic Place-names since 2000. This Gazetteer
is referred to in the National Plan for Gaelic (date) and to date
there has been a growing demand for accurate and reliable
information about Gaelic place-names.
The National Gazetteer is a database freely available to the public.
It will provide a single source of authoritative information on
Gaelic forms of place-names, including the research by which names
have been determined, links to bibliographical information and a six
figure grid reference which links to a map to locate each name. At
present there are 1,000 entries covering places throughout Scotland.
Work will continue to add further research and sound files to assist
with pronunciation, and to expand the number of entries.
AÀA is proud to announce that the Gazetteer is now available at www.ainmean-aite.org.
It is hoped that this database will be an invaluable educational
tool and a treasure trove for Scotland’s historical, environmental
and linguistic heritage. AÀA is very grateful for the support,
advice and funding from Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the Highland Council,
Argyll and Bute Council and all of our partners, associates and
clients in making this possible.

The Historical Thesaurus of English
project at the University of Glasgow presents the vocabulary of
English from Old English to the present arranged in semantic
categories. It will be published in two volumes as the Historical
Thesaurus of the OED by Oxford University Press on October 22, 2009.
Further details (including a special introductory price) are
available at http://www.oup.com/online/ht/

from 'Scottish
Place-name News', Spring 2014

Two articles about Stirling:

THE CARSE OF STIRLING IN THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH
CENTURIES

The year 2014 will mark the seven hundredth anniversary of the
Battle of Bannockburn. Sixteen years earlier, and some ten miles
to the south, the Battle of Falkirk was fought. Given their
significance, it is remarkable that the locations of both are
unknown. Bannockburn has been given the greater attention of
historians, many of whom have spent a considerable amount of
energy in trying to establish where it took place. In the process
of doing so many seized upon details written by the chroniclers in
Latin or Norman-French and then applied misleading interpretations
to these. Where they have most frequently erred is in their
perception of the tract of land known as the Carse which they
portray as a place of wetlands interrupted only by bogs and
marshes all overlain with peat moss. My recent presentation to the
SPNS conference was not an attempt to locate the site of either
battle; the intention was to try to create a picture of the Carse
of Stirling as it was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The Carse of Stirling is an expanse of alluvial land skirting the
upper reaches of the Firth of Forth. At a period prior to the
thirteenth century much of that area had been Crownland. From the
twelfth century onwards several monastic institutions received
gifts from the crown and individual possessors of lands in the
tract in question. Most prominent among these were the Abbeys of
Cambuskenneth, Holyrood, Dunfermline and Newbattle. They, along
with the abbeys of Arbroath, Jedburgh and Kelso as well as the
Temple of Ballentrodoch, were also gifted saltpans at the southern
end of the tract. This situation poses questions: why did the
Scottish monarchy possess a huge tract of what, allegedly, was
extremely low quality land as a source of revenue; why did several
members of the nobility, landed gentry and persons of prominence
choose to possess property there; why did many of them, including
all of the kings from at least David I, make gifts of this
supposedly grossly inferior land to the monastic institutions?

Gifts to Cambuskenneth Abbey
(the two northern areas)
and Holyrood Abbey (the two southern areas)

One of the tools used in this reconstruction was the study of
place-names and two groups of places were identified: all of the
Celtic names on record there on the assumption that they were
coined prior to 1298 and place-names in English on record up to
the end of the fourteenth century. These were located on a
distribution map and it became evident that the pattern was uneven
with some apparently unoccupied areas. The location and extent of
mid-eighteenth century peat-mosses delineated on the Military
Survey were inserted and these proved to correspond to the
deserted areas. Even the most cursory look at any existing peat
moss, such as Flanders Moss, shows that place-names do not occur
within their extent.
Included within the lands of Skeoch which lies contiguous with the
village of Bannockburn was a peat-moss. It was still in existence
in the eighteenth century and appears on General Roy’s Military
Survey. There are a number of place-names on its periphery:
Moss-side, Moss Neuk and two places called Risk and each of these
is an indicator of the moss having been more extensive on its
northern perimeter at an earlier period. We can push the
utilisation of this moss back to before the Battle of Bannockburn
as, in 1317, Robert the Bruce reconfirmed to the burgesses if
Stirling an ancient privilege of cutting peat there. It would seem
logical to assume that the nearest peatery to Stirling would be
allocated. If we take the distance from Stirling to the moss and
use this length as the radius to describe a containing circle it
is apparent that there are no overt indications of other mosses
situated upon the lands within its compass.

There is a paucity of baile and achadh names
within the tract despite the presence of a conspicuous number of
Gaelic and pre-Gaelic place-names. The absence should not be taken
to indicate an insignificant quantity of Gaelic speaking people
but what may be inferred is that the area was already settled and
occupied at the time when Gaelic began to have an influence on the
naming of places there.

The Carse of Stirling with
surviving areas of moss (yellow-green)
and other areas of moss on the mid 18th century military survey
by
General Roy (orange). Red dots Celtic place-names; blue dots
Scots/English

The existence of the Mains and Grange of Kerse in the middle of
the fourteenth century is an unequivocal indication that grain was
being produced in Abbotskerse at that time. Within an enclave in
the adjoining estate of West Kerse were the Temple Lands of
Dalderse granted about 1200. Later charters reveal that a
privilege pertaining to this entity was pasturage for 12 cattle,
60 sheep and two horses; had the Temple lands been uncultivated
with only pastoral farming being practised then there would have
been no necessity for this concession. Similarly, within the lands
of Bothkennar was a place called Cold Kitchen, the second element
of name having originated from Gaelic coitchionn, ‘a common
pasture’. The necessity for a discreet area to herd animals
implies that arable farming was being practised in the immediate
vicinity at the time Gaelic was spoken there. Certainly, by the
time of the battles, we find accounts within the Exchequer Rolls
that show large quantities of wheat and other grains being grown
at Bothkennar. Tiends paid in kind from the produce of the land
also indicate arable activity on a substantial scale in most of
the holdings on the carse. In 1215, the monks of Dunfermline
agreed to make an annual payment to the nuns of North Berwick of 3
chalders of oatmeal from the tiend of Cornton and the same monks
were receiving corn tiends from Polmaise Weland, Polmaise Elwyn,
Craigforth, Shiphauch, Balquhidderock and Skeoch. The abbot of
Cambuskenneth received oatmeal from the tiend of Polmaise Regis.
Records also exist for payments of cash from properties on the
carselands and these provide a picture of a community operating
well above the level of subsistence farming.

Nevertheless, even within the present constraints, it is possible
to recognise that the long held view of the mediaeval Carse of
Stirling being a morass is a myth and, in view of that, the
parameters in the search for the battlefields should be reviewed.

John Reid (from his talk at the autumn 2013
conference in Stirling)

SOCA DE STRUELIN: place-names in the medieval soke
or shire of Stirling

This study of the area around Stirling grew out of the Scottish
Toponymy in Transition project at the University of Glasgow. Part
of this project involves looking at the place-names of
Clackmannanshire, as well as Kinross-shire and Menteith. The
problem with studying a county like Clackmannanshire is that the
modern day county does not match the medieval or early modern
definition of Clackmannanshire. The parish of Alva, although
almost completely surrounded by Clackmannanshire, was historically
in Stirlingshire and only came into Clackmannanshire as part of
the 1891 reorganisation of Scottish local authorities. Much more
complex is the parish of Logie, just over the River Forth to the
north of Stirling. Here the parish was divided between the
counties of Clackmannanshire, Perthshire and Stirlingshire,
although before 1600 the vast majority of Logie can be shown to
have been in Stirlingshire. The soke of Stirling,
mentioned in the reign of Alexander I (1107-24), was a fairly
large unit of lordship, which was probably part of the king’s
demesne lands that stretched across both sides of the River Forth
near Stirling. This is later said in the reign of Malcolm IV
(1153-1165), to have been the Castrensis Provincia ‘the
castle province’. The parishes of Logie and Alva were probably a
northern extension of this castrensis provincia, indeed
it may have also included Clackmannanshire too before it became a
separate sheriffdom sometime between 1141 and 1150. The evidence
is not merely secular: the church of St Ninians – originally
called Eccles – had a substantial parochia, which was
basically the lands north of the River Carron, including the
modern parishes of Dunipace, Larbert, Gargunnock and probably
Airth and Bothkennar. Cambuskenneth Abbey was granted the kirk of
Eccles in the thirteenth century and it is notable that the kirks
of Alva, Tullibody, Tillicoultry and Clackmannan were all granted
to Cambuskenneth. This may mean that they, too, were originally
chapels of Eccles. If so, then it is likely the parochia of Eccles
was equivalent to the soca de Striuelin and the castrensis
provincia.

One name that encapsulates the longevity of the time-frame from
British to Scots is Bannockburn. The second element is clearly
Scots burn ‘stream’ and its Gaelic form may have been Allt
Bannoch or similar; all over Scotland a great many allts
have become burns. The town of Bannockburn takes its
name either from the burn or perhaps from the battle of 1314
fought in the carse just to the north. But what of the bannock
element? Deriving from a British word meaning ‘horn or peak’, the
word is mentioned in a medieval life of the Welsh saint St Cadoc,
the saint behind Kilmadock at Doune, where it is mentioned that
Cadoc on returning from a pilgrimage to St Andrews ‘had come to a
certain city, which is near the mountain Bannawc, and
said to be situated in the middle of Scotland’. In the Latin it is
called the Montem Bannauc. Looking south from the
Menteith Hills, there is, in the middle of the Gargunnock-Campsie
Range, Meikle Bin, a very prominent and pointed 570 metre hill.
This hill is visible from other parts of the lowlands, including
Glasgow and the surrounding area – precisely the area that was
British speaking for longest. The Bannock Burn is the most
prominent burn coming from the Stirling side of these hills.

The medieval church has generated a great number of place-names in
Scotland and the Stirling area in no exception to this phenomenon.
The earliest seems to be St Ninians or rather its former name
Eccles. Eccles is a British word borrowed from Latin ecclesia
meaning ‘church’. Eccles seems to have been the main church that
served what are now the parishes of St Ninians, Stirling, Airth,
Bothkennar, Dunipace, Larbert, Gargunnock, Logie, and Alva. We
know for sure that Dunipace, Larbert and Gargunnock were
originally chapels of St Ninians, while Alva and Logie were both
originally in Stirlingshire. Eccles may have been a minster-type
church, of the kind found in Anglo-Saxon England, that served this
area until the formation of a more formal network of parish
churches usually attributed to the reign of David I. The
dedication to St Ninian occurs by 1242, but need not necessarily
indicate that it was founded by Ninian, a 5th century holy man
apparently based in Whithorn. The lateness of the dedication may
mean it is actually of the 13th century.

Another early church term can be found in Logie STL. This is
usually found in medieval texts as Login Atheran, i.e.
Logie Airthrey. Logie is also found all over eastern Scotland. It
was originally thought to have been a word derived from Gaelic lag,
‘a hollow’, developing from Old Gaelic loc ‘a hollow,
ditch’. In most instances, Logie is sometimes assumed to be a
Scots version of a Gaelic diminutive form, either from G lagan,
OG locán, or sometimes from G lagaidh, which
was perhaps a locative form of lagach, meaning ‘place by
or in a hollow’. However, it has recently been put forward that
Logie derives from Latin locus ‘place, consecrated
place, ecclesiastical site’. Because Latin locus had
been borrowed into all the Celtic languages as loc it is
not at all clear whether we are dealing here with a Pictish or
Gaelic origin for Logie Airthrey. Two hogback-type stones testify
to its antiquity.

On the flat carselands of eastern Logie parish there are a group
of at least two, possibly three, British-names – Menstrie, Gogar,
and Manor. If we can accept that Gaelic was the main language of
this area from say 900 AD or so, then these names are very old
indeed. Menstrie first comes on record in 1178-79 when a Macbeth
of Menstrie witnessed a charter of Cambuskenneth. The name appears
to contain the British elements maes + tref
meaning ‘hamlet on the plain’, which more than adequately
describes its situation. Gogar does not come on record until about
1538 when it is listed among the lands belonging to Culross Abbey.
It seems to contain Brit. gwo and cor meaning
ultimately a ‘spur’. Manor, on record from about 1479, may contain
Brit. maenor, meaning ‘the stone built residence of the
chief of a district’.

There are two pit-names in Logie parish – Pendreich and
a now lost place-name called Pitveys. Pendreich is first
known as Petendreich from 1393 to 1472 leave no doubt that it is a
pit-name; the second element is Gaelic dreach
‘face, aspect’. Watson notes that all the places in Scotland
containing this name appear on sun-facing slopes. Pendreich in
Logie parish has fantastic views across the valley of Menteith
over to Ben Lomond and the south-western Highlands. Pitveys is
much more problematic. We know from charters and such documents
that it lay somewhere just to the north of Logie Kirk, near the
house of Broomhill. Gaelic uamh ‘cave’ for the second
element has been suggested, but this is not an area where one
would expect to find natural caves, the bedrock being lava. I
showed that the place-names around Stirling are complex, and my
bias towards Logie parish demonstrated that more research is need
into Stirling and its district south of the Forth. While much has
been done on Stirlingshire, especially by John Reid, there remain
ten parishes still to complete…!

Peter McNiven (based on his talk at the autumn
2013 SPNS Conference in Stirling)

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New Publications

(Spring 2013)

Compiled by Simon Taylor, with a little help from his friends. For
more extensive bibliographies of name-studies in Britain and
Ireland, and, less comprehensively, other parts of northern Europe,
see the bibliographic sections in the relevant issues of Nomina, the
journal of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland: most
recently ‘Bibliography for 2009’, compiled by Carole Hough, (Nomina
33 (2010), 193–208). The material in the Nomina Bibliographies is
set out thematically, and includes reviews which have appeared in
the given year. There is also now an onomastic bibliography for
Scotland 2006-2009 in Journal of Scottish Name Studies (JSNS) 4,
173-86; for 2010 in JSNS 5, 183-8; and for 2011 in JSNS 6, 97-9
(compiled by Simon Taylor). The following bibliography also includes
all the articles in the latest JSNS 6 (2012). (Available
free on line.)